The Danger Of Fire

September 19, 2004|By TOM CONDON Tom Condon is the editor of Place. He can be reached at condon@courant.com.

The enemies of historic preservation are such things as neglect, water, parking lots and highways, bad planning and fire. While all of these have stolen great buildings in Hartford, the most pernicious is fire. Once a building is in flames, it's usually too late to call a public hearing, file a motion or get the building on the National Register.

Hartford has lost magnificent structures to fire in recent years: Royal Typewriter, the Hawthorn Center, Crystalab and others. The Capewell was almost lost. The danger of fire now hangs over one of the most attractive -- well, potentially attractive -- 19th-century streets in the city.

It would be particularly tragic if any of these buildings are lost, because they are only a month or two from a major $3.5 million rehabilitation.

Belden Street cuts between Main Street and Albany Avenue in the North End, creating a triangular block. Being slightly out of the way, Belden Street managed to avoid the riots and ill-planned urban renewal efforts that damaged a good bit of the surrounding area.

The result is a remarkably intact row of a half-dozen brick houses, a couple in the Second Empire style, a couple in the Italianate style popular in the city a century ago and a Victorian Gothic at 20 Belden so eclectic and unusual that architectural historian David Ransom calls it ``the Mark Twain House of the North End.''

Unfortunately the buildings were abandoned some years ago and have deteriorated. The city moved to acquire them by foreclosure two years ago. City housing officials then found a developer to rehab five of the structures, possibly a sixth, and build two new ones.

The developer, Belden Development LLC, is a partnership of Broad-Park Development Corporation Inc., Corporation for Independent Living Inc., Greater Hartford Realty Management Corporation, Hopgood Group LLC and Milano Corporation, essentially the same group that did the successful Mortson-Putnam Heights project in the Frog Hollow neighborhood.

Belden Development began putting together the financing for the project. So far, so good. But this summer, fire struck one of the buildings, then another. Firefighters put out a third fire in a dumpster on the property.

The problem is that squatters are breaking into the buildings. Abandoned buildings tend to attract people who aren't careful with fire. The intruders are most likely drug addicts who lose focus after a time and forget what they did with the match, butt, blunt, joint, pipe or whatever. They've got to be kept out.

``If there've been two building fires, the odds of a third are pretty good,'' said Rich Bartman, a developer and member of the Hartford Preservation Alliance.

The alliance would like to see a better effort at securing the buildings. So would I; indeed, I suspect so would everyone involved.

The city and the developer have tried to secure the property. The buildings have been boarded up several times. There's a fence around the properties. The invaders keep squeezing through or climbing over the fence and plying the plywood off.

The developer expects to have the financing together in two months. It would be tragic if any of the buildings were lost in the meantime.

It would also be a shame to lose what thus far has been great work at preserving a historic street.

That the city acquired these properties for rehab is a great step forward from what used to happen, which wasn't much of anything beyond issuing demolition permits. That such a good development team stepped forward is a blessing. Their work on Mortson Street and Putnam Heights brought scores of middle class people into the Frog Hollow neighborhood, mirabile dictu.

Belden Street is important both for its architecture and its role in an expanded downtown. City officials wisely want to move across the I-84 chasm and reclaim the once-elegant near-North End neighborhood, using the remaining Victorian structures as a base. The homes on Belden, Florence and Seyms streets could be the bookend to the dwellings in the So-Do and Congress Street areas, the north and south downtown residential districts.

Is there a way to get private security for two months, or more police patrols, or a neighborhood group to keep an eye on the buildings? Can we get better materials, even better hardware such as socket screws, with which to secure the buildings? Though the financial arrangements are complex, is there a way to get construction started sooner?